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DA Court Clog

Abolishing plea bargains would destroy the judiciary—studies prove

Aljabri 13: Fuad Aljabri, National University, May 5th, 2013. “Should Plea Bargaining Be Abolished?”. https://www.academia.edu/23810552/Should_Plea_Bargaining_Be_Abolished?auto=download RW

The proponents of plea bargaining contend that the most prevalent advantage plea bargaining afford is the reduction of high caseload. They argue that trials are very costly and time-consuming. For example, “judges and prosecutors want high disposition rates in order to prevent case backlogs and to present a public impression that the process is running smoothly. Public defenders prefer quick dispositions because they lack the personnel to handle the caseload” (Neubauer and Fradella, 2012, p. 317). In addition, a research study led by Howe (2005) maintains that “to attempt to abolish plea bargaining in any other way would require changes in the constraints noted at the outset of this part – the amount of behavior defined as crime, the amount of public resources devoted to fighting crime, and the basic approach to criminal trials”. Furthermore, Chief Justice Burger mentioned the potential devastating effects of abolishing plea bargaining; he stated, “the consequences of what might seem on its face a small percentage change in the rate of guilty pleas can be tremendous. A reduction from 90 percent to 80 percent in guilty pleas requires the assignment of twice the judicial manpower and facilities – judges, court reports, bailiffs, clerks, jurors and courtrooms” (Palmer, 1999). Given the advantages of plea bargains in terms of money and time saving, it is quite predictable that this practice may prove to be beneficial to keep court budges low and help get cases resolved in a timely manner. According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), “Some argue that the plea bargaining process is more cost efficient than having all cases go to trial. Furthermore, some researchers and legal scholars have reiterated that the practice is fair, just, and procedurally sound” (Devers, 2011). Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that plea bargaining may have some benefits for the prosecutor, defendant, the victims as well as the society. For instance, plea bargaining allows defendants to get quick and certain dispositions of their cases. Victims also may benefit by eluding the hassles of trial which revives the horrors of victimization in their memories. Finally, the public is protected from the potential dangers posed biracial violent offenders who are free on bail while awaiting their trial (Acevedo, 1995).

Overburdened defense attorneys hamper effective representation – longer jail times, conviction of innocents, and racial biases means worse injustices—turns case

Brunt 15: Alexa Van Brunt, "Poor people rely on public defenders who are too overworked to defend them" Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/17/poor-rely-public-defenders-too-overworked, June 17, 2015. CC

Money can buy you a great defense team, but what if you can’t afford one? More than 80 of those charged with felonies are indigent. As a result, they are unable to hire an attorney and instead rely on representation by a public defender. Public defenders are, as a general matter, the hardest working sect of the legal bar. But our nation’s public defender systems have long been plagued by underfunding and excessive caseloads. In Florida in 2009, the annual felony caseload per attorney was over 500 felonies and 2,225 misdemeanors. According to the US Department of Justice, in 2007, about 73 of county public defender offices exceeded the maximum recommended limit of cases (150 felonies or 400 misdemeanors). Too often, those who are poor receive lower quality defense than those who have the means to pay. The on-going decimation of public defense prevents defense attorneys from conducting “core functions,” including factual investigation into the underlying charges. In a lawsuit brought in Washington State, it emerged that publicly appointed defense attorneys were working less than an hour per case, with caseloads of 1,000 misdemeanors per year. This state of affairs also leads to exorbitant trial delays. Consequently, roughly 500,000 pre-trial detainees sit in jail year after year before being adjudged guilty of any crime. This makes a mockery of the innocent-until-proven-guilty principle so sacred to our system of justice. Just two years ago, then-Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the country’s indigent defense systems were “in a state of crisis.” Overworked and poorly prepared attorneys were unable to provide effective representation to those they counsel, in violation of their ethical obligations to provide competent and diligent representation and their clients’ rights under the Sixth Amendment. Holder’s words came on the 50th anniversary of Gideon v Wainwright, in which the Supreme Court held that states are constitutionally required to provide counsel to defendants unable to afford to hire their own. Four years later, the Supreme Court ensured the same right for juveniles. Gideon prompted the widespread creation of public defender systems on which so many rely. Yet, the conditions underlying Holder’s condemnation of public defense systems persist. Though funding for indigent defense systems vary by state, such systems are unified in being cash-strapped. Louisiana has had ongoing problems with the funding of its public defender systems since at least 1986 (controversially, Louisiana public defense is supported by the court costs and fines paid by public defenders’ own clients). Ten judicial districts in the state are slated to run out of funds to pay their public defenders as early as this month. Other parishes have already implemented “restricted services plans” – meaning public defenders are refusing to take on new cases. Indeed, in recent years public defenders in Missouri, Kentucky and Pennsylvania have also refused to represent new clients due to an overload of cases. The costs of relying on such overburdened attorneys to provide the primary assurance of a fair trial are significant. 95 of criminal cases end in plea bargaining. Excessive caseloads contribute to this trend, and result in a “meet ‘em and plead ‘em” system of justice, in which clients have little more than a brief conversation in the courtroom with a harried public defender before pleading guilty. In Chicago, where I practice as a civil rights litigator, people are spending longer stints in jail (an average of 56 days for those in on drug charges.) Part of the reason is the rampant use of continuances, a sign of an overworked public defender system. Consequently, pre-trial detainees incur a “trial tax” – those who decide to fight their case are forced to stay in jail longer than those who plead guilty. Rikers island survivor Kalief Browder faced this same dilemma. There are also clear racial implications to the poor health of public defender systems. Black people are disproportionately caught up in the criminal justice system. In 2011, black Americans – 12 of the US population – constituted 30 of persons arrested for a property offense and 38 of persons arrested for a violent offense. This group bears the brunt of our public defender systems’ underfunding and overwork.

Court clog harms the economy—it’s bad for business—it also hinders justice and rights protections which turns the case

Leahy 12: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). “Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy On The Nominations Of Mary Elizabeth Phillips To The Western District Of Missouri And Thomas Owen Rice To The Eastern District Of Washington.” March 6th, 2012. http://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/statement-of-senator-patrick-leahy-on-the-nominations-of-mary-elizabeth-phillips-to-the-western-district-of-missouri-and-thomas-owen-rice-to-the-eastern-district-of-washington

While consensus judicial nominations are stalled without a final vote by the Senate, millions of Americans across the country are being harmed by delays. The American people and our Federal courts cannot afford these unnecessary and damaging delays. As the ABA president noted last week: “Backlogs mean justice delayed in cases involving protection of individual rights, advancement of business interests, compensation of injured victims and enforcement of federal laws. Longstanding vacancies on courts with staggering caseloads impede access to the courts. They create strains that, if not eased, threaten to reduce the quality of our justice system. They erode confidence in the courts’ ability to uphold constitutional rights and render fair and timely decisions. Delay at the federal courts puts people’s lives on hold while they wait for their cases to be resolved. Businesses face uncertainty and costly holdups, preventing them from investing and creating jobs. In sum, judicial vacancies kill jobs. Justice delayed, as the famous maxim goes, is justice denied. It’s bad for business, it’s unfair to individuals, and it slows government enforcement actions, which ultimately costs taxpayers money.”

Decline causes Trump diversionary war

Foster 16: Dennis M. Foster, Washington Post. December 19th, 2016. “Would President Trump Go to War to Divert Attention From Problems At Home?” http://inhomelandsecurity.com/would-president-trump-go-to-war-to-divert-attention-from-problems-at-home/. RW

If the U.S. economy tanks, should we expect Donald Trump to engage in a diversionary war? Since the age of Machiavelli, analysts have expected world leaders to launch international conflicts to deflect popular attention away from problems at home. By stirring up feelings of patriotism, leaders might escape the political costs of scandal, unpopularity — or a poorly performing economy. One often-cited example of diversionary war in modern times is Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the Falklands, which several (though not all) political scientists attribute to the junta’s desire to divert the people’s attention from a disastrous economy. In a 2014 article, Jonathan Keller and I argued that whether U.S. presidents engage in diversionary conflicts depends in part on their psychological traits — how they frame the world, process information and develop plans of action. Certain traits predispose leaders to more belligerent behavior. Do words translate into foreign policy action? One way to identify these traits is content analyses of leaders’ rhetoric. The more leaders use certain types of verbal constructs, the more likely they are to possess traits that lead them to use military force. For one, conceptually simplistic leaders view the world in “black and white” terms; they develop unsophisticated solutions to problems and are largely insensitive to risks. Similarly, distrustful leaders tend to exaggerate threats and rely on aggression to deal with threats. Distrustful leaders typically favor military action and are confident in their ability to wield it effectively. Thus, when faced with politically damaging problems that are hard to solve — such as a faltering economy — leaders who are both distrustful and simplistic are less likely to put together complex, direct responses. Instead, they develop simplistic but risky “solutions” that divert popular attention from the problem, utilizing the tools with which they are most comfortable and confident (military force). Based on our analysis of the rhetoric of previous U.S. presidents, we found that presidents whose language appeared more simplistic and distrustful, such as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush, were more likely to use force abroad in times of rising inflation and unemployment. By contrast, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, whose rhetoric pegged them as more complex and trusting, were less likely to do so. What about Donald Trump? Since Donald Trump’s election, many commentators have expressed concern about how he will react to new challenges and whether he might make quick recourse to military action. For example, the Guardian’s George Monbiot has argued that political realities will stymie Trump’s agenda, especially his promises regarding the economy. Then, rather than risk disappointing his base, Trump might try to rally public opinion to his side via military action. I sampled Trump’s campaign rhetoric, analyzing 71,446 words across 24 events from January 2015 to December 2016. Using a program for measuring leadership traits in rhetoric, I estimated what Trump’s words may tell us about his level of distrust and conceptual complexity. The graph below shows Trump’s level of distrust compared to previous presidents. As a candidate, Trump also scored second-lowest among presidents in conceptual complexity. Compared to earlier presidents, he used more words and phrases that indicate less willingness to see multiple dimensions or ambiguities in the decision-making environment. These include words and phrases like “absolutely,” “greatest” and “without a doubt.” A possible implication for military action I took these data on Trump and plugged them into the statistical model that we developed to predict major uses of force by the United States from 1953 to 2000. For a president of average distrust and conceptual complexity, an economic downturn only weakly predicts an increase in the use of force. But the model would predict that a president with Trump’s numbers would respond to even a minor economic downturn with an increase in the use of force. For example, were the misery index (aggregate inflation and unemployment) equal to 12 — about where it stood in October 2011 — the model predicts a president with Trump’s psychological traits would initiate more than one major conflict per quarter. Of course, predictions from such a model come with a lot of uncertainty. By necessity, any measures of a president’s traits are imperfect. And we do not know whether there will be an economic downturn. Moreover, campaigning is not governing, and the responsibilities of the Oval Office might moderate Donald Trump. The psychologist Philip Tetlock has found that presidents often become more conceptually complex once they enter office. Nevertheless, this analysis suggests some cause for concern about the international ramifications of an economic downturn with a President Trump in the White House.

V2

DA

Courts are overworked in the squo—judges are at the edge and one big push collapses the judiciary.

Gersham 15 Jacob Gershman “Federal Judge Says His Overworked Colleagues Bench Close to Burnout” Wall Street Journal November 12th 2015

Judges in federal trial courts have for some time expressed concern about the ever-growing backlog of civil cases. The workload complaint from the judiciary appears to be getting more urgent. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California says he fears his colleagues are reaching a breaking point. In an interview with a local news channel, Chief U.S. District Judge Morrison England said he and the five other judges on his bench are sometimes working more than 80 hours a week trying to make a dent in the pile of pending cases. “The active judges that I’ve spoken to are starting to say, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ or they’re leaving the bench, because it’s just too much,” Judge England told KCRA 3 in Sacramento. “We’re doing everything we possibly can to try to come up with new and inventive ways to get the cases out. But, we’re at a crisis point.” The number of cases filed per judge in California’s Eastern District has been almost twice the national average, according to recent statistics. The court has 5,880 civil cases pending as of the end of 2014, according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. That’s a slight increase over the year before and works out to just under a thousand pending cases per judge. Judge England told The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that some of his cases are nearly a decade old, including a suit that’s imperiled because a key witness recently died. The California district isn’t the only jurisdiction stretched thin. WSJ reported that a combination of factors are contributing to a backlog in federal trial courts across the nation. The reasons include population shifts, politics and a surge in the number of federal prisoners. The article noted that only Congress can create new judge positions (or move them from slower-growing regions to faster-growing ones), but efforts to hire more judges have met political resistance.

Abolishing plea bargains would destroy the judiciary—studies prove

Aljabri 13: Fuad Aljabri, National University, May 5th, 2013. “Should Plea Bargaining Be Abolished?”. https://www.academia.edu/23810552/Should_Plea_Bargaining_Be_Abolished?auto=download RW

The proponents of plea bargaining contend that the most prevalent advantage plea bargaining afford is the reduction of high caseload. They argue that trials are very costly and time-consuming. For example, “judges and prosecutors want high disposition rates in order to prevent case backlogs and to present a public impression that the process is running smoothly. Public defenders prefer quick dispositions because they lack the personnel to handle the caseload” (Neubauer and Fradella, 2012, p. 317). In addition, a research study led by Howe (2005) maintains that “to attempt to abolish plea bargaining in any other way would require changes in the constraints noted at the outset of this part – the amount of behavior defined as crime, the amount of public resources devoted to fighting crime, and the basic approach to criminal trials”. Furthermore, Chief Justice Burger mentioned the potential devastating effects of abolishing plea bargaining; he stated, “the consequences of what might seem on its face a small percentage change in the rate of guilty pleas can be tremendous. A reduction from 90 percent to 80 percent in guilty pleas requires the assignment of twice the judicial manpower and facilities – judges, court reports, bailiffs, clerks, jurors and courtrooms” (Palmer, 1999). Given the advantages of plea bargains in terms of money and time saving, it is quite predictable that this practice may prove to be beneficial to keep court budges low and help get cases resolved in a timely manner. According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), “Some argue that the plea bargaining process is more cost efficient than having all cases go to trial. Furthermore, some researchers and legal scholars have reiterated that the practice is fair, just, and procedurally sound” (Devers, 2011). Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that plea bargaining may have some benefits for the prosecutor, defendant, the victims as well as the society. For instance, plea bargaining allows defendants to get quick and certain dispositions of their cases. Victims also may benefit by eluding the hassles of trial which revives the horrors of victimization in their memories. Finally, the public is protected from the potential dangers posed by violent offenders who are free on bail while awaiting their trial (Acevedo, 1995).

Overburdened defense attorneys hamper effective representation – longer jail times, conviction of innocents, and racial biases means worse injustice.

Brunt 15: Alexa Van Brunt, "Poor people rely on public defenders who are too overworked to defend them" Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/17/poor-rely-public-defenders-too-overworked, June 17, 2015. CC

Money can buy you a great defense team, but what if you can’t afford one? More than 80 of those charged with felonies are indigent. As a result, they are unable to hire an attorney and instead rely on representation by a public defender. Public defenders are, as a general matter, the hardest working sect of the legal bar. But our nation’s public defender systems have long been plagued by underfunding and excessive caseloads. In Florida in 2009, the annual felony caseload per attorney was over 500 felonies and 2,225 misdemeanors. According to the US Department of Justice, in 2007, about 73 of county public defender offices exceeded the maximum recommended limit of cases (150 felonies or 400 misdemeanors). Too often, those who are poor receive lower quality defense than those who have the means to pay. The on-going decimation of public defense prevents defense attorneys from conducting “core functions,” including factual investigation into the underlying charges. In a lawsuit brought in Washington State, it emerged that publicly appointed defense attorneys were working less than an hour per case, with caseloads of 1,000 misdemeanors per year. This state of affairs also leads to exorbitant trial delays. Consequently, roughly 500,000 pre-trial detainees sit in jail year after year before being adjudged guilty of any crime. This makes a mockery of the innocent-until-proven-guilty principle so sacred to our system of justice. Just two years ago, then-Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the country’s indigent defense systems were “in a state of crisis.” Overworked and poorly prepared attorneys were unable to provide effective representation to those they counsel, in violation of their ethical obligations to provide competent and diligent representation and their clients’ rights under the Sixth Amendment. Holder’s words came on the 50th anniversary of Gideon v Wainwright, in which the Supreme Court held that states are constitutionally required to provide counsel to defendants unable to afford to hire their own. Four years later, the Supreme Court ensured the same right for juveniles. Gideon prompted the widespread creation of public defender systems on which so many rely. Yet, the conditions underlying Holder’s condemnation of public defense systems persist. Though funding for indigent defense systems vary by state, such systems are unified in being cash-strapped. Louisiana has had ongoing problems with the funding of its public defender systems since at least 1986 (controversially, Louisiana public defense is supported by the court costs and fines paid by public defenders’ own clients). Ten judicial districts in the state are slated to run out of funds to pay their public defenders as early as this month. Other parishes have already implemented “restricted services plans” – meaning public defenders are refusing to take on new cases. Indeed, in recent years public defenders in Missouri, Kentucky and Pennsylvania have also refused to represent new clients due to an overload of cases. The costs of relying on such overburdened attorneys to provide the primary assurance of a fair trial are significant. 95 of criminal cases end in plea bargaining. Excessive caseloads contribute to this trend, and result in a “meet ‘em and plead ‘em” system of justice, in which clients have little more than a brief conversation in the courtroom with a harried public defender before pleading guilty. In Chicago, where I practice as a civil rights litigator, people are spending longer stints in jail (an average of 56 days for those in on drug charges.) Part of the reason is the rampant use of continuances, a sign of an overworked public defender system. Consequently, pre-trial detainees incur a “trial tax” – those who decide to fight their case are forced to stay in jail longer than those who plead guilty. Rikers island survivor Kalief Browder faced this same dilemma. There are also clear racial implications to the poor health of public defender systems. Black people are disproportionately caught up in the criminal justice system. In 2011, black Americans – 12 of the US population – constituted 30 of persons arrested for a property offense and 38 of persons arrested for a violent offense. This group bears the brunt of our public defender systems’ underfunding and overwork.

Turns the case—fewer people will go to trial which means less agonism

Court clog also harms the economy—it’s bad for business

Leahy 12: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). “Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy On The Nominations Of Mary Elizabeth Phillips To The Western District Of Missouri And Thomas Owen Rice To The Eastern District Of Washington.” March 6th, 2012. http://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/statement-of-senator-patrick-leahy-on-the-nominations-of-mary-elizabeth-phillips-to-the-western-district-of-missouri-and-thomas-owen-rice-to-the-eastern-district-of-washington

While consensus judicial nominations are stalled without a final vote by the Senate, millions of Americans across the country are being harmed by delays. The American people and our Federal courts cannot afford these unnecessary and damaging delays. As the ABA president noted last week: “Backlogs mean justice delayed in cases involving protection of individual rights, advancement of business interests, compensation of injured victims and enforcement of federal laws. Longstanding vacancies on courts with staggering caseloads impede access to the courts. They create strains that, if not eased, threaten to reduce the quality of our justice system. They erode confidence in the courts’ ability to uphold constitutional rights and render fair and timely decisions. Delay at the federal courts puts people’s lives on hold while they wait for their cases to be resolved. Businesses face uncertainty and costly holdups, preventing them from investing and creating jobs. In sum, judicial vacancies kill jobs. Justice delayed, as the famous maxim goes, is justice denied. It’s bad for business, it’s unfair to individuals, and it slows government enforcement actions, which ultimately costs taxpayers money.”

Decline causes Trump diversionary war

Foster 16: Dennis M. Foster, Washington Post. December 19th, 2016. “Would President Trump Go to War to Divert Attention From Problems At Home?” http://inhomelandsecurity.com/would-president-trump-go-to-war-to-divert-attention-from-problems-at-home/. RW

If the U.S. economy tanks, should we expect Donald Trump to engage in a diversionary war? Since the age of Machiavelli, analysts have expected world leaders to launch international conflicts to deflect popular attention away from problems at home. By stirring up feelings of patriotism, leaders might escape the political costs of scandal, unpopularity — or a poorly performing economy. One often-cited example of diversionary war in modern times is Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the Falklands, which several (though not all) political scientists attribute to the junta’s desire to divert the people’s attention from a disastrous economy. In a 2014 article, Jonathan Keller and I argued that whether U.S. presidents engage in diversionary conflicts depends in part on their psychological traits — how they frame the world, process information and develop plans of action. Certain traits predispose leaders to more belligerent behavior. Do words translate into foreign policy action? One way to identify these traits is content analyses of leaders’ rhetoric. The more leaders use certain types of verbal constructs, the more likely they are to possess traits that lead them to use military force. For one, conceptually simplistic leaders view the world in “black and white” terms; they develop unsophisticated solutions to problems and are largely insensitive to risks. Similarly, distrustful leaders tend to exaggerate threats and rely on aggression to deal with threats. Distrustful leaders typically favor military action and are confident in their ability to wield it effectively. Thus, when faced with politically damaging problems that are hard to solve — such as a faltering economy — leaders who are both distrustful and simplistic are less likely to put together complex, direct responses. Instead, they develop simplistic but risky “solutions” that divert popular attention from the problem, utilizing the tools with which they are most comfortable and confident (military force). Based on our analysis of the rhetoric of previous U.S. presidents, we found that presidents whose language appeared more simplistic and distrustful, such as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush, were more likely to use force abroad in times of rising inflation and unemployment. By contrast, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, whose rhetoric pegged them as more complex and trusting, were less likely to do so. What about Donald Trump? Since Donald Trump’s election, many commentators have expressed concern about how he will react to new challenges and whether he might make quick recourse to military action. For example, the Guardian’s George Monbiot has argued that political realities will stymie Trump’s agenda, especially his promises regarding the economy. Then, rather than risk disappointing his base, Trump might try to rally public opinion to his side via military action. I sampled Trump’s campaign rhetoric, analyzing 71,446 words across 24 events from January 2015 to December 2016. Using a program for measuring leadership traits in rhetoric, I estimated what Trump’s words may tell us about his level of distrust and conceptual complexity. The graph below shows Trump’s level of distrust compared to previous presidents. As a candidate, Trump also scored second-lowest among presidents in conceptual complexity. Compared to earlier presidents, he used more words and phrases that indicate less willingness to see multiple dimensions or ambiguities in the decision-making environment. These include words and phrases like “absolutely,” “greatest” and “without a doubt.” A possible implication for military action I took these data on Trump and plugged them into the statistical model that we developed to predict major uses of force by the United States from 1953 to 2000. For a president of average distrust and conceptual complexity, an economic downturn only weakly predicts an increase in the use of force. But the model would predict that a president with Trump’s numbers would respond to even a minor economic downturn with an increase in the use of force. For example, were the misery index (aggregate inflation and unemployment) equal to 12 — about where it stood in October 2011 — the model predicts a president with Trump’s psychological traits would initiate more than one major conflict per quarter. Of course, predictions from such a model come with a lot of uncertainty. By necessity, any measures of a president’s traits are imperfect. And we do not know whether there will be an economic downturn. Moreover, campaigning is not governing, and the responsibilities of the Oval Office might moderate Donald Trump. The psychologist Philip Tetlock has found that presidents often become more conceptually complex once they enter office. Nevertheless, this analysis suggests some cause for concern about the international ramifications of an economic downturn with a President Trump in the White House.